The pictures on the walls were of the times when he had been brave, or clever, or kind. They made the house a happy place. And the bad things he had done, the lies he had told and the people he had betrayed and the times he had been cowardly, were scrawled in ugly letters on the wall of the outhouse.
His memory formed the library of the house. He could pick out any volume and instantly be transported to another place and time: Kingsbridge Grammar School in his innocent childhood, Hatfield Palace in the thrilling year of 1558, the banks of the Seine river on the bloodstained night of St Bartholomew, the Channel during the battle with the Spanish armada. Strangely, the character of Ned that lived in those stories did not remain the same. It seemed to him sometimes that quite a different person had learned Latin, someone else had fallen under the spell of young Princess Elizabeth, another character had stabbed a man with no nose in the graveyard of the church of St-Julien-le-Pauvre, and yet another had watched the fireships scatter the galleons off Calais. But of course they were all just different versions of himself, the owner of the house.
And one day soon the place would fall down, as old buildings did, and then, quite quickly, it would all turn to dust.
With that thought he drifted off to sleep.
My historical advisors for A Column of Fire were: Mercedes García-Arenal on Spain; the late Roderick Graham on Scotland; Robert Hutchinson on England; Guy Le Thiec on France; and Geoffrey Parker on the Netherlands.
I was also helped by: Anne-Laure Béatrix and Béatrice Vingtrinier at the Louvre in Paris; Dermot Burke at Hatfield House; Richard Dabb and Timothy Long at the Museum of London; Simon Lennox, Trisha Muir and Richard Waters at Loch Leven Castle; Sarah Pattinson at Carlisle Castle; Les Read on English sixteenth-century theatre; and Elizabeth Taylor at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
My editors were: Cherise Fisher, Leslie Gelbman, Phyllis Grann, Neil Nyren, Brian Tart and Jeremy Trevathan.
Friends and family who gave advice included: John Clare, Barbara Follett, Emanuele Follett, Tony McWalter, Chris Manners, Charlotte Quelch, John Studzinski, Jann Turner and Kim Turner.
All of you helped me write a better book, and I give you my heartfelt thanks.
Readers sometimes ask me which of the characters in a novel are real historical figures and which are fictional. For those who are curious about this, here’s a list of the real people in A Column of Fire.
ENGLAND
Mary Tudor, queen of England
Elizabeth Tudor, her half-sister, later queen
Tom Parry, Elizabeth’s treasurer
Sir William Cecil, advisor to Elizabeth
Robert Cecil, William’s son
Sir Francis Walsingham, spymaster
Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester
Sir Nicholas Throckmorton
Nicholas Heath, Lord Chancellor
Sir Francis Drake, sea captain
Sir John Hawkins, naval commander, also said to be a pirate
Sir Francis Throckmorton
George Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury
Bess of Harwick
Sir Amias Paulet
Gilbert Gifford, spy
William Davison, temporary secretary of state to Queen Elizabeth
Anthony Babington, traitor
Margaret Clitheroe, Catholic martyr
Howard of Effingham, Lord High Admiral
Philip Herbert, earl of Pembroke, earl of Montgomery
Edmund Doubleday
Guy Fawkes
Thomas Percy
FRANCE
François, duke of Guise
Henri, son of François
Charles, cardinal Lorraine, brother of François
Marie de Guise, sister of François and mother of Mary Queen of Scots
Louis ‘Bottles’, Cardinal de Guise
Anna d’Este, duchess of Guise
Henri II, king of France
Caterina de’ Medici, queen of France
Diane de Poitiers, mistress of King Henri II
Children of Henri and Caterina:
Francis II, king of France
Charles IX, king of France
Henri III, king of France
Margot, queen of Navarre
Mary Stuart, queen of Scots and queen of France
Antoine, king of Navarre
Henri, son of Antoine, later King Henri IV of France
Louis, prince of Condé
Gaspard de Coligny, admiral of France
Charles de Louviers, assassin
William Allen, leader of the exiled English Catholics
Ambroise Paré, royal surgeon
Jean de Poltrot, assassin
Jean de Hangest
Jean Le Charron, provost of Paris
SCOTLAND
James Stuart, illegitimate half-brother of Mary Queen of Scots
James Stuart, son of Mary Queen of Scots, later King James VI of Scotland
and King James I of England
Anne of Denmark, queen of Scotland
John Leslie, bishop of Ross
Sir William Douglas
Lady Agnes, his wife
George ‘pretty Geordie’, their son
Willie Douglas, Sir William’s illegitimate son
SPAIN
King Felipe II
Count of Feria, diplomat
Bishop Álvaro de la Quadra
Bernardino de Mendoza, ambassador to London
Alonso Perez de Guzman, 7th duke of Medina Sidonia, admiral of the Spanish armada
NETHERLANDS
Margherita of Parma, governor, illegitimate half-sister of King Felipe II
Pieter Titelmans, grand inquisitor